First the bug only:

Uf you make a new colony module ship component with a different population cap... Then take that component and add it to a new <startinghips> ship in factionDefs.xml/ShipDefs.xml, the new module starts carrying 2.5 mil population on it even if the module has a 1mil PopulationCap.    Being able to define starying population on a ship by ship bases in ShipDefs.xml would be great.

Now the mod stuff:

I reserve no rights to any of my changes & made that clear in the zipfile's included legal.txt file for any legal monsters lurking behind a SD reader's shoulder

It was made with xml files from beta 3 build 0.61.
Changes are as follows:

The Mod Details:

• Terrans, all around good but not really great at anything in particular. I didn't want to risk copying another race's change & instead gave them an extra scout with +500 credits in the bank for a total of 3500credits to start with.
• Altarian are specialized in research giving them an extra Survey ship and reducing the range of -both- to hull+15(BasicLifeSupport+EnvironmentalSupport) from the initial hull+18(BasicLifeSupport*3) at the cost of their scout seemed resonable while the reduced range helps prevent the benefit of dual survey ships at  turn0 being too overpowering. Removing the engines from it (speed of the hull alone=2/turn) seemed too harsh.  Lowering the range seemed more than reasonable
• Iridium These guys forfeit their scout for a freighter with very good range (Hull+4x Basic Life Support) and +1 TradeLicensesMax. 
• Adding the Trade License to their existing racial bonus perks in various was did not grant the trade license, the only way I could grant them the trade license was to add it into their colonization tech in the iridium tech tree
• Drengin traded some range away from their scout in exchange for a tier1 laser & cannon to get added to it.
• krynn are all about spreading their faith & it stands to reason that there would be no shortage of krynn excited to go spread the faith. They trade their scout for an extra colony ship (a very good trade IMO). 
• I wanted to give them smaller cheaper "GodPods" with a lower pop (1.5-2Mil?), but the Bug made that seem silly.
• Yor are different at the core, but the starting ship selection is absolutely stock. I -Tried- making a "colonyPod" module with a 1Mil pop cap & giving it <RaceTraits>SyntheticLife</RaceTraits> as the prereq... But I could find no way to do that without giving a new tech (A triviality) & doing so seemed silly given the bug noted above.
• I Chose not to create the new tech because the colony module itself is linked to a pretty freaking low level "TechTree". Since I didn't want to make a new tech for both synthetic & nonsynthetic races and risk breakingthe AI colonizzation I chose not to change the colony module to Prereq on something other than "TechTree"... I started out experimenting with  just the new colonyPod using the same prereq. Unfortunately, an apparent bug causes the 1M population Cap Colony pods to start with 2.5mil (as opposed to the expected .5 mil) & I could find nowhere this was set. Since colonymodules on starting ships all start with 2.5 mil (50% of the 5Mil cap), I expected the colony pod ships to start with 0.5mil (50& of 1mil)

• However... Having an extra 3 fully loaded colony ships would be a -massive- bonus if the yor homeworld were to remain fully populated. It was reduced to a comfortable but tight 2.5mil to put their synthetic life difference front and center .
•  This results in 2.5 mil less total population on turn 0 than the standard 12.5mil (10mil planet +2.5mil in a Colony ship)in exchange for two extra colony ships. 
• I  would have prefered ~5mil (things grind to a crawl below then in my experience) with 3x 1mil colony probes in orbit, but the bug made that a nonoption.
• * On a completely unrequired inclusion, A copy of ImprovementDefs.xml with a correction of the yor factory upgrade typo (it was upgrading from itself instead of the one before) was included in the zipfile
• You can download it here with the instructions on where to put things in the zipfile.